


five to one against

by Philomytha



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Haemomancy, Possession, World War II, slight spoilers for Lies Sleeping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-16 22:38:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16962789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philomytha/pseuds/Philomytha
Summary: How Molly and Nightingale discovered haemomancy.





	five to one against

**Author's Note:**

  * For [valmora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/valmora/gifts).



> Dear valmora, I hope you enjoy the story, and happy Yuletide!

Molly was polishing the furniture in the atrium when they carried the Nightingale in. 

It was after sunset, and she was not alone in the atrium. Four of the Folly's most active magicians had left after breakfast to investigate something, something Nightingale had worried over and talked around with her, leaving her knowing just enough to be concerned, but not enough to understand what he was afraid of. It was something to do with the war, she knew that much for certain. Unlike the last one, magic was being used, and used on both sides, and the magicians of the Folly could talk of little else. 

They had been gone all day, and despite the late hour, the Master of the Folly was also in the atrium, sitting in his usual armchair with the newspaper feigning nonchalance. They all did that: pretended emotions they didn't feel, or more usually pretended not to be feeling the emotions she could smell on them from across the room. Perhaps the Master was fooling his colleagues. 

Mellenby and Cartwright were carrying the Nightingale between them, Smythe trailing behind. "Almost there," said Cartwright wearily, then, "Oh, sir, I didn't see you there." 

"Been celebrating, have you?" said the Master, unfolding himself from the armchair in a concertina of long thin limbs, and she recognised these as more false words, a blanket over his fear. "You're late. The sirens will be going soon." 

Molly could feel their distress and strain from here. She continued to polish the table, turning so that she could see properly. There was something wrong. Something more than whatever magical mishap had brought the Nightingale back on a board; it wasn't the first time for that. 

"No, sir," said Mellenby quietly. "No." He had Nightingale's head and shoulders in his hands. Then all three spoke at once as the Master strode forwards.

"It was a trap--"

"He went in first--"

"He said he could handle it--"

"He _did_ handle it--"

"None of us saw what happened--"

"It was as much as we could do to get him out--"

The Master raised his hand, and they fell silent. Molly froze too, hand poised on the tabletop. "I see. Take him to the Infirmary at once. Then report to me properly." 

Molly made her duster vanish and moved over to the magicians. As always, they looked surprised to see her, as if she had been standing sideways to the world and had only just turned square on. She couldn't truly do that here, but she could still move silently, and normally she enjoyed the effect, but now she was too anxious to take any amusement from their jumps. She stared at Cartwright and extended her hands. He knew her well enough not to protest that she wasn't strong enough to help, and let her take Nightingale's legs. As she touched him, she recoiled and nearly dropped him onto the polished floor, then glared at Mellenby. 

He gave her a baffled look and said wearily, "If you want to help, then help." 

It wasn't Nightingale. This man was not her Nightingale. She took the legs anyway, eyes cast down, and Cartwright turned away to speak to the Master. 

She heard a distant siren start its familiar wail, and before they had reached the door out of the atrium the nearby siren began too. The Master said, "Cartwright, Smythe, downstairs now." He looked at her, then shook his head. "You help Mellenby, my girl." 

Molly grimly carried the man who appeared to be Nightingale through to the Infirmary, and they laid him on one of the beds. The Master followed them in, and Molly turned to him with an urgent stare, but he looked past her at Mellenby. 

"We don't know what happened," Mellenby said. "When we found him he was lying on the floor, just like that. There's nothing we can see wrong, it's like he's deeply asleep." 

Molly hissed, and both of them looked at her, as if she were some inopportunely barking dog. "Yes, Molly?" 

He didn't know, Molly thought. Neither of them could tell that this was not the Nightingale. She bared her teeth and hissed at what lay on the bed.

"Something wrong, is there? We'll get it sorted, don't you worry," said the Master, not unkindly. "Ah, here's Matron."

Molly watched intently as Matron and the Master conferred. "I think this is more your department than mine, sir," said Matron after a few minutes of examining Nightingale's body. "He's not hurt that I can see. Begging your pardon, but the siren's gone, you know." 

"Yes, yes. Hm." The Master laid a thin hand on Nightingale's head, and frowned. Molly wondered how he could fail to sense the imposter at once. "He does seem... not quite all there. And you think there's something not right, don't you, Molly? I think we'd best keep him in here for now. We can lock and ward this room, just in case. The firespotters will keep the building safe, and after this raid is over Professor Allensworth and the doctor can make a more thorough examination. Now then, downstairs, everybody." An HE crashed within Molly's earshot and she flinched, but the others didn't seem to notice. 

Matron headed back for the door, and with a reluctant look back at Nightingale, Mellenby followed. Molly didn't move. 

"Molly," the Master said warningly. 

She stayed standing over the bed.

"Let her stay, sir. Someone should keep an eye on things, just in case," said Mellenby. He gave a tired smile. "Besides, there's only one person who can budge her once she's made up her mind to something, and he's out of commission." 

"Very well," said the Master. "Keep an eye on him, then." Molly heard the click of the lock as they left the room, felt the clockwork whirr of the wards, like a grating against her mind. The lights went out, but she could still see clearly. 

Outside, the moon rose higher in the sky and Molly stood unmoving beside the bed, listening to the thrum of the engines overhead, the crump of bombs and the rattle of returning fire. Nothing too close, tonight. 

She heard Nightingale's breathing change, his heartbeat speed up, and she was not surprised when all at once he sat up. He stood, and straightened his jacket, and for a moment Molly dared hope that the spell was broken, that the true Nightingale was back, the gesture was so familiar. 

He turned on the electric light, and jumped when he saw her. "Oh! What are you doing here?"

It was Nightingale's voice, but the alarm in his tone and the blank unrecognition in his eyes made her recoil from him. He frowned at her, then said, "I'm fine, you can get on with your work now." He walked towards the door, ignoring her, and halted a step away. "Clever," he murmured. "Not complete fools, are you?" 

He cast his own spell then, jamming the clockwork of the ward and forcing the lock, and the door swung open. Molly glided after him. This was not Nightingale, and whoever or whatever it was, it should not be on the loose inside the Folly. She hesitated at the top of the stairs down to the cellars, where the magicians were hiding from the bombs. But they would not understand her at once, and they had not recognised that he was an imposter before, perhaps he could trick them still. And there was no time. The being wearing Nightingale's body was heading straight for the door to the Master's study. 

Molly moved swiftly and reached it before him, turning and standing in his path. She hissed, and he frowned narrow-eyed at her. "What are you? Get out of my way." 

She felt the stirrings of him beginning another spell. "I've no wish to harm you, girl," he said, "but you really must be going down to the shelter now, don't you think?" He let loose his spell, and she gave a hiss of pure outrage. It was Nightingale's magic, and yet it was not, and Nightingale would never have been foolish enough to think he could use a glamour on _her_. She shrugged it off, and remained between him and the door. 

He still didn't see her, didn't recognise her, didn't know what or who she was or what she could do. He gave a brief frown as she did not respond to his glamour, then raised a hand to strike her, beginning a second spell. His eyes were cold and hostile. She held their gaze to give herself courage. This was not Nightingale, and the Folly was under attack. Molly sprang with teeth bared for his throat. 

Nightingale was strong for one of the men of iron, but he was no match for her, and the force of her leap knocked him to the floor. He attempted to change his spell, but much more slowly and incompetently than her Nightingale would have done. She bit down, but he twisted and instead of the killing strike that would have torn open his throat, she only managed a shallow wound. 

Blood gushed into her mouth like an electric shock; she nearly released him, then swallowed. It was hot and sweet and fresh, and in it she felt the iron of this world, the iron of his magic. And then she felt everything, felt this world as she had once felt the place she was born, sensed the magic and what Nightingale called vestigia, the footprints and tracks left by every creature that moved across the fabric of the world, layer upon layer upon layer. The shock of it was like someone who had been in darkness for many years suddenly seeing the sun; she clutched the man who was not Nightingale and saw him truly now, saw this man's self wedged crookedly into Nightingale's body, as wrong as biting into an apple and tasting raw flesh. Whatever he had done to Nightingale, she would avenge him. She opened her mouth to its full extent and lunged forwards. 

"Molly!"

The voice was distant, fainter than a whisper, but she knew it at once, knew it as certainly as she knew the man she held was not Nightingale. 

"Molly! Is that you? Molly?" 

She closed her mouth, stared around wildly, and the voice was gone. The man struggled again, and she pinned him ferociously and hissed at him; terror whited his eyes as he looked up at her. "What are you?" he gasped, and it was not his voice she had heard before. 

Slowly, deliberately, she leaned forwards again, holding him easily, and placed her lips to the gash on his neck. 

At once she could see again, could feel this world again, and she heard Nightingale's voice again. "Molly? Can you hear me?" 

Nightingale's body was occupied by someone else, but he was not dead. "Where are you?" she asked, not with her voice in this world, but with her true voice, and he heard her as she drew his blood. 

"Molly! Oh, thank God, Molly." She could sense where his voice was coming from, away to the north of here, not more than a mile. She could sense everything around her now, with the iron blood in her mouth, but her attention was reserved for Nightingale. "Molly, he got the drop on me, it was a trap and I had to get the others out. How are you doing this--no, there's no time for that now. Molly, he's a German spy, you have to stop him. They didn't realise, not even David, but you did. Don't let anyone stop you. Do whatever you have to, but stop him. Don't worry about me. It's not me. Kill him if you must." 

She lifted her head again, and he was gone. She did not release her grip, and the man wearing Nightingale's body--the German spy, if that was right--looked away as if he knew what Nightingale had just told her to do. 

She did not rip his throat out. Instead she bent down to his neck again and as soon as she sensed Nightingale, she said, "No. I'm going to get you back. Your spy won't go anywhere, don't worry." 

He tasted confused, uncertain, afraid, all those feelings the men of the Folly kept so tightly hidden. "But how--there's a raid--"

She could see around her now, the iron from his blood and the magic from his blood giving her access to what she had lost so long ago, her own true self, her true power. As soon as she'd been carried here, she had felt the iron walls of this world closing around her, cutting her off from half her senses, leaving her with only scraps of what had been as natural as breathing in her own place. But now the iron of this world was in her, alive and breathing, and she could work here. She could walk here, as she had once walked at home. 

She stood up and left her body lapping at the Nightingale's blood, and walked through the Folly, feeling the clockwork magic of the firespotters on the roof holding off the bombs, the underlying strength of the place with the centuries of magic seeped into its stones. And now that magic was no longer alien and closed to her, but wide open and welcoming. 

Molly opened the door. The city was blackout-dark, with only the white fingers of searchlights pointing up into the clear sky, the bomber's moon retreated behind a cloud. She could see it through the cloud, could see through the walls, through the hard pavement to where the rest of the magicians sat huddled in their cellar, see the iron of the underground railway further away, and the shadows of the trees in the park. She could see, for the first time, where she was going. 

She stood on the threshold, then walked slowly down the steps and into Russell Square, into the living street and the currents of past and present life that ran along it. She turned, basking in it, let her skirt swirl around her for sheer pleasure of being part of this world for the first time. 

"Molly? What are you doing?"

The distress she felt from him cut through her pleasure; she let her attention settle on the Nightingale. "I'm coming to find you," she told him. She knew which way he was, how far, she could feel it in the pull of his blood on her lips and his voice in her mind, and she walked north and east, between the houses. An ARP warden passed her, hooded torch pointing at the ground, his fear and determination gleaming around him. He did not see her. She was a creature of night again. 

A bomb fell about a mile away; she felt it in the concussion of the air and the blast of anguish and terror. She hissed at it, and continued on her way. 

"How can you find me? _I_ don't even know where I am." 

"I can feel you." She could feel the Nightingale the way you could feel the direction of the sun with closed eyes, from the heat burning on your face. 

"Where is the spy?" 

"I have him too. Don't worry." She was aware, if she thought about it, of the man she was restraining on the floor in the atrium, but all she needed of him now was the iron blood in her mouth. "I'm not far away." 

Another bomb fell, this one nearer, she tasted dust and soot in the air and winced from the cacophony of distress that arose near it. She went on, around a corner and along another street, past a parked car. Those had scarcely been anywhere to be seen, when she had entered the Folly; now they were everywhere, the metal workings of their engines transparent to her now. 

"Molly." Nightingale's voice had a new urgency to it. "He knows you're coming. Be careful." 

There was a third bomb, and she understood: these were not all happening now, they were the city's memory of the bombs, turned against her. The man she was restraining was here too, and even as she held him down and drank his blood, he was fighting back. She felt a reluctant admiration; the Nightingale would have done that too. 

Bombs were falling around her now, like some murderous rainfall, each blast a shock of noise and dust and agony. Molly hissed, fixed her mind on Nightingale beyond this barrage, and danced through them, weaving her steps gracefully amongst the destruction. 

As suddenly as it had started, the bombardment stopped, and the night was still and quiet again, an unnatural quiet in a city. The cloud cleared and the moonlight glimmered on the road, turning it silver and glorious. Molly turned almost without knowing it, towards the moon road. The moon was full, this road would carry her home. The air shimmered ahead, the way was open. Only a few steps...

"Is that true?" Nightingale whispered, and she knew he was as much in her mind as she was in his. "Is that true, Molly?" 

Yes, she wanted to cry, yes, it was. She had been too young to learn the trick of world-walking before she was taken here, and she had never dared to try. But she had no doubt that this road was open now. 

_You can go_ , she heard then, the first she had heard from the spy, and she nearly spat out the blood in her mouth. It was true, this was the road home--and it was a trap laid for her, to stop her before she found the Nightingale. 

Molly closed her eyes to the moon and its promise, and looked to her left. She could hear Nightingale's heart beating now, no more than twenty strides away. She stopped in front of a door, one of many in this row of ordinary terraced houses, but she had no doubt this was the right one. She could see that Nightingale had been here recently, she could see the other magicians, the traces of their magic still smoking and whirring in the walls. There had been a trap; Nightingale had fought hard, but the spy had turned his own courage against him.

She pushed the door, and it swung open. It was an ordinary house: a narrow corridor, stairs going up, two doors to front and back rooms and a third to the kitchen. "I'm here."

"Upstairs," said Nightingale. "I think." For all that he was close, he sounded very faint now, as if his strength was fading. 

She climbed the stairs swiftly and tried the first door. It opened; inside was an empty bedroom. The second too stood empty. The back bedroom was locked. Molly could feel the power holding the door shut, a clockwork mechanism of magic and a lock of iron. She could make nothing of it. But the door was wood. She laid her hand on it. 

"Be earth," she said, and it began to soften under her fingers, crumbling, mouldering, rot running through the long fibres of the pine tree it had once been, eating the tree and turning it into new life. Within a minute the wood of the door had crumbled into rich earth, and she inhaled the sweet air that rose from it. The iron lock fell to the floor untouched, the clockwork wards continued to tick on, holding shut a door that no longer existed. 

"Molly." Weak, and very close. 

Inside the room, a man lay on the bed. It was Nightingale, and not Nightingale; one look at him and Molly knew this for the body of the man who had invaded the Folly, but with Nightingale imprisoned inside him. The German spy, Nightingale had called him, but he was more than that. A magician of iron and steel, a man who could place himself into the Nightingale's body, then use the Nightingale's own soul to keep his body alive until he returned. 

Molly drank deeply of Nightingale's blood, said, "Be ready," and in her walking body, bent down and pressed her lips to the lips of the man on the bed. 

At once they were back in the Folly, in the atrium. Molly was back in her body, but still with her awareness of this world's magic heightened by Nightingale's blood. And it was Nightingale's now, she had joined them together and both men were in their own bodies, she could feel it at once. Just for an instant she stood still, content. This was right. 

But the spy was with them now, also in his own body, and for a second Molly was kissing him and biting Nightingale's throat at the same time. Then she pulled back from Nightingale's throat and realised the extent of her mistake. 

The spy was here, strong in his power, and Nightingale was terribly weakened. She licked the final drops of his lifeblood from her chin and tried to leap at the spy, hissing fury. There was nobody else to help here; everyone else was deep in the shelter or busy with the raid. 

Nightingale tried to push himself upright, gathered strength to cast a spell, but Molly knew he would be unable to win this fight. She had known how to drain her prey, once. His attempted spell faded away and he sank back half fainting. 

The spy extended his hand as Molly sprang, and she found herself frozen, unable to move forwards or backwards, held this time by a much stronger spell than he had used before. But he stopped, without going for a kill. 

Instead, in barely accented English, he said, "You could go free." He gestured to where the blood still covered Nightingale's neck. "I saw all that you did. You could go free. The moon is still high. This fight is nothing to do with you or your kind. What are these magicians to you?" 

She stopped struggling against the magic that restrained her, and slowly he eased the spell until she knew she could break it if she chose. She didn't move. The smell of blood was filling her mind, and a shaft of moonlight was visible at the window. 

"Molly," Nightingale whispered. 

She looked at him, then away. 

"You are fond of him, though. I would not ask you to hurt anyone you are fond of. Here. I will offer my own heart's blood freely. Go back to your people with greetings from my German masters, and tell them we offer friendship and trade with your people." 

The spy inclined his head, baring his neck for her, and she saw he was sincere. 

"You want more? I will swear upon my power to leave this Folly, leave your friends here unharmed. I have seen all I need already. They have power, but not enough to hinder our invasion. I am not a fool, madam, when I see a greater prize I will happily yield up the smaller one in its place. You are a vastly greater treasure than anything this Folly has to offer, and they show their folly clearly by keeping you here as a maidservant. You are a queen's daughter, are you not? My people would give you royal gifts." 

She was not a queen's daughter, not any more, she was the despised daughter of a defeated queen, sold by the victor in exchange for a gift of great power. 

The echoes of her link with Nightingale were fading now, but she still could sense him, anger and grief and despair, all under a layer of crushing exhaustion. He thought she might take the offer. He thought she _should_ take the offer, that she had no reason not to. 

She sent him a picture, a series of pictures. A small terrified girl in a cupboard, carefully coaxed out by a stern-faced man whose hands were kind. An old woman sitting in the kitchens here, painstakingly teaching her letters and words, trying and failing to teach her to speak. Food, warmth, safety. A youth, shining with power, smiling at her with bright gleaming curiosity, but a friendly curiosity, not a desire to take her apart and find out how she worked. Trying to teach her to do spells, failing as she admired but could not replicate the iron magic of this world. Sneaking in after curfew, trusting her not to report him. Speaking for her when she got into trouble for dancing on moonlit nights. Image after image, jokes and sorrows and secrets and trust. 

On the floor, Nightingale gave a small smile and leaned back, opening his hand towards her. 

Molly gave no warning, no hiss before she sprang. She lifted the spy bodily, bending his own arm behind him. Most magicians could not work magic when in pain, but she moved fast, just in case. She felt him try as she carried him swiftly towards the main door, felt the beginnings of a spell in his mind, and twisted harder. Threw him into the street, into the night and the raid, and stood panting in the doorway, staring out futilely into the night she could no longer sense, into a darkness where she could no longer find her way. She slammed the door shut and sat down on the floor inside it. There were a few drops of blood on her apron, she could smell it, taste it. She wanted it. 

The bombers passed over, the ack-ack guns fired, but she did not move. She didn't know which way she would go, if she once moved. 

After a time she heard a small sound across the atrium, and she raised her head. Nightingale was there, walking slowly, one hand on the wall, his skin paler than hers. A voice deep inside her said _wounded prey_. He had bandaged his own neck, at least, but he too had blood on his clothes. 

Perhaps he sensed the problem, or perhaps he could go no further, for he stopped halfway across the atrium, leaning on the back of a chair. 

"Molly," he said. "It was good to hear your voice." 

She lowered her head. 

"Do you want to go back? To--to where you came from?"

They sold me, she thought. They sold me and gave me to be a slave here. What can there be for me there? 

Nightingale was watching her closely, and she wondered if he too could hear the echoes. 

"You can't, can you?" he said. "I'm sorry. I'd miss you if you went, but I would rather you were where you could be yourself. It was incredible, what you did tonight. I had no idea. I could sense _vestigia_ for miles away, even though it was all rather confused with the spy. It was incredible." 

She smiled a little despite herself, because he was always like that when it came to new magic. 

"But if you can't go back, you will always have a place wherever I am, Molly. I promise you that." 

He tried to walk towards her then, but stumbled and nearly fell. Molly moved automatically, instinctively, and caught him safely, then recoiled as the smell of blood rose again. She almost threw him into an armchair and backed away. 

Nightingale sat up, gripping the chair arms for support, intent on her despite his weakness. "What are you afraid of? You must know I won't hurt you, I'm not angry. You saved us all." 

She hissed loudly, let him see her teeth, her lips, her tongue. She wanted, oh how she wanted, to bite down again. He could not stop her. 

"No," said Nightingale, sounding almost amused. "No. That's absurd, Molly. I don't believe it." 

She shook her head, her teeth still bared, then turned her back on him, paced across the atrium. A bomb landed nearby, but she no longer felt it as she had before, just the noise and concussion, not the blast of the fabric of this world being violently rearranged. She wondered how it felt to Nightingale. She didn't think any of the men of iron could sense the magic of their world from any great distance, perhaps he heard and felt no more than she did. Less; his senses were less acute. 

She felt the magic of the firespotters on the roof, and saw from the way Nightingale's head tilted that he felt that too. Something had struck their building. Molly had been shown how to use a stirrup pump with the rest of the staff of the Folly, but the magicians on the roof conjured up water instead. They were doing it now, and she felt them move something, repair something. They knew their work, and the glass of the atrium roof was long since boarded up. But it could still be dangerous here. 

She walked slowly back towards Nightingale, and looked in the direction of the back stairs into the cellars. 

"Yes," he said. "Not a bad idea. But what if our friend out there comes back?"

Molly shook her head. He was long gone, she had felt him flee, would feel him again if he came back. She gestured to the stairs again, fixing Nightingale with a frown. 

"You can't stay up here on your own," he argued. "Besides, the way I feel now, I think I'd probably go down headfirst, and then what was the point of going to all that trouble to get me back?" 

She hissed a little at him, just to let him know what she thought of this ploy, but as another bomb landed she went over anyway. Helped him up anyway. Ignored the smell of blood anyway. He gave her a smile of complete trust, and leaned against her, and even this close to him, close enough that she could hear his rapid light pulse, she could sense not the least hint of fear. She helped him slowly down the staircase and paused outside the door to the cellars. Usually, the magicians went to the left, in the armoury and firing range, and the staff went right, to the storerooms. Nightingale halted.

"Are you ready to face them all? I think we'll keep it simple for the general crowd, just tell them I recovered and we came down here. I'll debrief fully to the Master later. But if you would prefer to wait a while, we can. It's safe enough out here." 

Molly swallowed, to rid her mouth of the last tastes of blood. Nightingale was regarding her steadily; she saw that he would sit down here at the bottom of the stairs with her until she was ready. It was that patient companionship, beyond all else, that touched her. She smiled up at him, letting her teeth show. He returned the smile without hesitation, then, impulsively, leaned in and kissed her forehead, bringing his bandaged neck close to her face. 

"Thank you," he whispered. 

Molly permitted the gesture, then gently pushed him back. It only took a little effort to ignore the smell of blood now. She wrapped her arm around him as he faltered, nodded to him, and side by side they went in.


End file.
